John L. Lewis

John Llewellyn Lewis (12 February 1880-11 June 1969) was President of the United Mine Workers from 1919 to 1960, succeeding Frank Hayes and preceding Thomas Kennedy.

Biography
John Llewellyn Lewis was born in Cleveland, Lucas County, Iowa in 1880 to a family of Welsh miner immigrants, and he began work as a miner aged 17. In 1901 he began his active work for the United Mine Workers, becoming acting president in 1919 and president in 1920. A leading member of the AFL, he successfully organized unskilled, mass-production workers into trade unions. This resulted in a clash with AFL policy in 1935, and in 1936 all such unions, including his miners, were expelled from the AFL; they formed the CIO, with Lewis as president. During the next four years he led a number of militant and bitter CIO strikes in such industries as steel, automobiles, tires, and electrical products. In 1940, in protest against Franklin D. Roosevelt's third-term nomination, he resigned his presidency and in 1942 withdrew the miners, whose president he remained. Although he was not a communist, he defied the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act out of principle by refusing to decline this on oath. He died in 1969.